Alec Baldwin Twitter rant: The Cannes connection

Alec Baldwin’s Twitter rant against a Daily Mail journalist has prompted another round of cluck-clucking over Baldwin’s temper that seems to pop up periodically for the actor.

On Twitter on Thursday, Baldwin let loose a stream of profanities and asked followers to “straighten out” a Daily Mail reporter who wrote that Baldwin’s pregnant wife, Hilaria, had been tweeting about her upcoming wedding during the funeral service for actor James Gandolfini.

The Daily Mail reporter appeared to be wrong in his suggestion about any tweets during the funeral, but it was quickly overshadowed by Baldwin’s obscenity-laden invective.

The Baldwin tweets have since been deleted from the account, which has since been deactivated, as the actor maintains a low profile. But Baldwin won't be staying out of the public eye for too long.

Audiences will soon get a chance to see Baldwin unfiltered in a different way as he appears as himself in “Seduced and Abandoned,” a James Toback documentary that shows the actor as he tries to raise money for a film called “Last Tango in Tikrit” at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. The film, which premiered at this year’s Cannes, is set to air on HBO on an as-yet unscheduled date later this year.

Baldwin keeps a level head throughout the film, though does seem to be amused and bemused by some of the reaction to him as a TV star and thus unworthy of their financing.

I’d witnessed at Cannes how Baldwin can get his ire up, as he did several times at members of the French service industry during a dinner interview. He expressed incredulity at the waitstaff, at one point saying to his dinner companions after a young waiter has sought to override one of his choices, “I've been going to fine restaurants in Europe since you were swimming around in your father's…. to use a Maileresque quote. So don’t tell me what’s best to order.”

But it was less the bursts of impatience that were apparent as it was a protectiveness of his pregnant wife, which may explain somewhat, if hardly entirely, why he was so aggressive in his response Thursday.

On the way over to the dinner in Cannes, he said he had gotten out of his car to yell at the driver of Sharon Stone's limo, who was blocking the road.

Told by this reporter that he found it at times hard to keep his cool in the face of the snarl of Cannes crowds and traffic, Baldwin replied, "It's hard to keep my cool when the health of my wife is involved."